On one of our recent walks around town, in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown, we happened to meet someone I know. And he said to me as he walked past us, six feet distant, “So, you are out here walking in the valley of the shadow of death?”
And I responded, “Yes, it’s where I live.”
My friend was not sure he understood me, so he asked about my statement later. I explained, we all live in the valley of the shadow of death. We cannot escape it. Perhaps as a pastor, one who conducts funerals, I am more aware of it than others.
The story is told of another pastor whose wife died. While the pastor was driving his children to the funeral, they stopped at an intersection and a semi tractor-trailer crossed their path. As the semi passed, the shadow of it enveloped their car. The pastor used the opportunity as a teachable moment. He asked his children, “Which would you rather be hit by, the semi or the shadow?”
His children responded, “The shadow of course.”
Then the pastor explained to his children, “That’s what has happened to your mother. The shadow of death has passed over her. Jesus was hit by the semi on the cross so that all we have to experience is the shadow.”
In our Gospel story for today, the risen Jesus comes to two of his disciples as they are walking the road through the valley of the shadow of death. Listen for God’s word to you from Luke 24:13-35…
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
What an amazing thing! Imagine if someone you loved died and was able to come and explain their death to you from their perspective. I imagine it would change the way you view everything.
That is something of what Jesus did for his first disciples. However, Jesus had accomplished something that no one else has accomplished before or since. He conquered death. He came out the other side, not just into a disembodied, soul-full life, but into a resurrected life, with a new body. Granted, it was a new body that could do new things, like vanishing. But it was a body, nonetheless. The Gospel accounts are at pains to make it clear to us over and over again. The risen Jesus was not a ghost. He was a newly embodied person.
And who were the two disciples that Jesus met on the road to Emmaus? Up until this past week, I never connected the name “Cleopas” to anyone else in the New Testament. But then this week I saw a connection. The name in Greek is Κλεοπᾶς and in John 19:26-27, there is a Mary with Jesus at the cross, whom John tells us is married to Κλωπᾶ. Κλεοπᾶς and Κλωπᾶ may be two forms of the same name. If so, that means that the two disciples on the road to Emmaus were Cleopus (or Clopa) and Mary. They were a married couple and they apparently lived in Emmaus, just 7 miles from Jerusalem. In any case, what we have in verses 19 through 24 is the Gospel according to Cleopus. He tells all the essential elements of the Good News about Jesus to Jesus! But it wasn’t Good News yet for Cleopus because he didn’t really believe, until Jesus warmed his heart.
What was the road like from Emmaus to Jerusalem? We are not sure precisely what village Luke is talking about. One possibility is modern-day Motza, approximately 10 kilometers distant from the Upper Room in Jerusalem. If this is the place Luke meant, then the two disciples would have been walking downhill, in a slightly northwesterly direction, thus towards the sunset. On their way back, they would have been making the climb uphill to Jerusalem across somewhat rugged terrain.
However, the key thing to see here is not precisely who the disciples were, nor what the road to Emmaus was like. The most important thing is that Jesus met these two disciples as they walked through the valley of the shadow of death. Furthermore, the risen Jesus meets us in our sorrow, just as he did those first disciples. He meets us right where we are, and he comforts us by his Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4…
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
You say, “Yes, that all sounds well and good. But Jesus was there physically with his first disciples. He does not meet physically with us.”
That is true. But Jesus does meet spiritually with us in our sorrow by the power and presence of his Holy Spirit. And we can speak to him in prayer just as his first disciples spoke to him. Prayer can even become a dialogue, just as Jesus’ first disciples had a dialogue with him. Prayer is not simply about our speaking to God, but also God speaking to us. The thing is, we have to get quiet enough to hear God’s voice.
How will God or his Son Jesus speak to us? Often, he speaks to us through Scripture. He speaks to us through friends. He speaks to us through books. And he can speak to us in the quietness of our own hearts, just as he spoke to Elijah with that “still, small voice”.
My son Josh was supposed to have an interview recently for an internship opportunity during his study abroad in Dublin which is planned for this fall. He told me that the night before the interview he was praying, and he kept hearing “no” in his mind. Sure enough, the next day, the interview did not happen due to some sort of miscommunication.
Now, I know we don’t like to hear “no” from God. But God does not always say “no” to us in prayer. As somebody once said, “In answer to prayer, sometimes God says ‘No’, other times he says ‘Slow’, still on other occasions he says ‘Grow’ and then finally he says ‘Go!’”
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For all the promises of God in him [that is in Christ] are yes, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.” Isn’t that wonderful? If you want to access the promises of God, all you have to do is come to him through Jesus and the answer is “yes and amen” every time.
On this occasion, Jesus not only spoke to his disciples through Scripture, he explained the Scriptures to them. That’s what the word translated “interpreted” means in verse 27. It can mean to “translate”, to “interpret” or to “explain thoroughly”.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have Jesus explain the Scriptures thoroughly to us? What a teacher he would be!
Here is the great news… Jesus promises to do just that for us! In John 14:26, Jesus says to his disciples, “But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” Wow!
Now let’s look in greater depth at one of the things Jesus explained to his disciples. He apparently explained thoroughly to them the answer to the question he had just asked: “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”
Is that not a fascinating expression? It raises the whole question of the necessity of suffering. Is that not the question we often ask when we are suffering or a loved one is suffering? We ask, “Is it really necessary, God?”
Now, I don’t know the answer to that question.
But I think I know the answer to a related question: “Was it necessary that there should be suffering in this world at all?”
I believe the answer is “No.”
I believe God created this world perfect. And that we and the fallen angels have messed up this world by the abuse of our free will. I believe that is where all suffering ultimately stems from.
But that is not the question Jesus asks here. He asks, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”
Jesus’ implied answer is, “Yes.”
In other words, given that we live in a fallen world, filled with suffering because of our own wrong choices and the wrong choices of heavenly beings, and given, furthermore, that God wanted to redeem our world from suffering, was it necessary that God should take that suffering upon himself?
Jesus’ implied answer is “yes”. And that is what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth; he has taken the suffering of our whole world upon himself, and somehow vanquished it through the cross.
Don’t you think that if there was some other way that God could save us, he would have done it without going through the horror of the cross? It seems to me that he would have. So, I conclude that the cross was the only way for God to save us, the only way for him to put an end to our suffering once and for all.
Then, you may ask, “Why are we still suffering?”
The answer is because God is still working out all the implications of the cross.
Another way to put this is to say that at the cross, God won the decisive battle against evil, by taking evil upon himself. But God has yet to win the war. The cosmic battle between good and evil is still playing out in our world and in our individual lives.
That’s why I love the story of the little boy who came home from Sunday School. His mother asked him, “What did you learn today?”
The little boy said, “Our teacher taught us about the book of Revelation.”
The mother was a little bit concerned, feeling that the book of Revelation might be a bit beyond the learning capacity of a boy in elementary school. So, she decided to question her son a little bit further. She asked, “So what did you learn about the book of Revelation?”
And the boy answered, “Oh, that’s simple Mom. Jesus wins in the end.”
Isn’t that enough to know, while we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death? Isn’t it enough to know that God loves us, and Jesus wins in the end?
Right now, in our Thursday night book group we are reading and discussing C. S. Lewis’ book, The Problem of Pain. In the Preface, Lewis has this great statement…
… when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.
Then, there is a third thing we need to see in this passage. We read that Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it. Furthermore, we read that Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
I find this highly significant. I am quite sure that Luke sees a connection between this event and the Eucharist, Holy Communion, the meal of bread and wine that came to live at the very heart of the ministry of the early church.
But what I want you to see is that the blessing and the breaking go together. One might almost say that it is only the broken bread that Jesus blesses, just as it was his broken body on the cross that brought blessing to us. And, furthermore, Jesus is made known to us, revealed to us, in the breaking of the bread. I find that significant, not only for its implications regarding Holy Communion, but I find it significant in its application to all the breaking experiences of this life. It is in the breaking experiences of life that Jesus is not only made known to us, but it is in the breaking that he is most significantly, most characteristically revealed to us.
I don’t know what our life in this world would have been like if human beings had never, so to speak, “fallen from grace”. But since we are fallen creatures, and since it is obviously God’s desire in Christ to save us from our fallen, sinful condition, it is most characteristic of God to meet us in our suffering.
George MacDonald once went so far as to say, “The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” Meditate on that one for a little while and see if it doesn’t turn your prayer life upside down.
You know, if you turn a cross slightly askew from the way we are used to seeing it, a cross becomes, not a “t” but an “x”. And in this case, I think it is quite true to say that “x” marks the spot. “X” marks the spot where God meets us. God meets us in the crucifying experiences of life. He meets us in our brokenness.
The “x” that marks the spot appears in another place as well, strangely enough. The first two letters of Christ, Χριστός in Greek, are “Chi” and “Rho”, and “Chi” looks like our English letter “x”. And the “Rho” looks like our English letter “P” or almost like a shepherd’s staff. So, you can see why the “Chi-Rho” became such a prominent symbol in Early Christianity. “X” marks the spot. God meets us in Christ on the cross.
That is why I also believe that every seeming “fall from grace” can become, if we so choose, “a fall into grace”. Because that is what God wants for every one of his children. God took on human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, and he died on a cross because he doesn’t want us to “fall from grace”; he wants us to fall into grace, into his everlasting arms.
Paul talks about a thorn in the flesh that he asked God to take away three times. But God didn’t do it. Instead God said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
There is a song we sing in our 4:30 service entitled, New Wine, that really sums up what I am trying to say in a good, creative, and slightly different way. The words go like this…
In the crushing in the pressing
You are making new wine
In the soil I now surrender
You are breaking new ground
So I yield to You and to Your careful hand
When I trust You I don’t need to understand
So make me Your vessel
Make me an offering
Make me whatever You want me to be
I came here with nothing
But all You have given me
Jesus bring new wine out of me
‘Cause where there is new wine
There is new power
There is new freedom
And the kingdom is here
I lay down my old flames
To carry Your new fire today[1]
The Road to Emmaus is perhaps the greatest story that Luke tells. But it is part of a whole. Luke has placed it here as a bookend to his Gospel. The other bookend is the story at the beginning of the Gospel. It is the story of another Mary and her husband Joseph, who are walking away from Jerusalem back to their home without Jesus. Mary and Joseph, when they discover they have lost Jesus, run to Jerusalem to find him. Mary and Cleopus when they think they have lost Jesus are suddenly met by him on the Road to Emmaus. Then they run back to Jerusalem to tell their friends all about their experience.
I wonder: have you ever lost Jesus? If so, he is seeking to find you today. And once you are found by him it will be the most thrilling experience of your life. You will run to tell others. And no one will be able to stop you…
[1] CCLI Song # 7102397 Brooke Ligertwood © 2017 Hillsong Music Publishing Australia (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing) For use solely with the SongSelect®. Terms of Use. All rights reserved. www.ccli.com CCLI License # 3077632
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